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Thursday, December 25, 2014

If I were
to list a dozen or so Words-with-a-capital-W that someone has spoken to me with
a force that has lodged them in my soul and changed its course, that would be
one of them.“When you write, don’t
think” was the first utterance out of the mouth of author Madeleine L’Engle in
the first workshop of hers I attended over thirty years ago.Her word freed me.I had a history of sitting down at my
typewriter to begin an article, an essay, a sermon—and starting again and
again, striking through what I had written.I was thinking.That was the
problem.I was editing, which is a
process very different—contrary, in fact—to creating.I learned from Madeleine to put my hand in
the hand of my own Unconscious, trusting that if I moved into a quiet space
where my mind stopped manufacturing, I just might encounter inspiration.

In the
beginning was the Word.That is the real
story.All of those Christmas things
dear to our hearts, like shepherds and angels, wise men and mangers, barnyard
animals and innkeepers and Mary and Joseph, are parts of the container holding
the story.But the story is much more
than the crèche.More even than the Baby
Jesus himself, who would, after all, have had no special meaning had he not
been born into a world to which he might speak his words, a world that might
speak back its words to him and about him.The real story is the story of the Incarnation:how the Word was made flesh and dwelt among
us.

Like all stories,
the one about the Word becoming flesh can be misunderstood and distorted.You might get stuck on the question that
modern minds like to ask, “Did this really happen?Is this the way it was?Is the story factually trustworthy?”If you do, however you answer those
questions—yes or no—you will surely miss the story of a lifetime.For stories are those things we live by, the
means by which we humans make meaning.And the Word becoming flesh is not so much about a time-bound,
historical incident as it is a story eternally true.Words do become flesh, and the way they do
bears an eerie resemblance to the holy incarnation of the Word who became flesh
and dwelt among us as a man called Jesus.

You, too,
could perhaps quite easily come up with your own short list of words that have
changed your life, like Madeleine L’Engle’s word changed mine.Choose any of those words and possibly you
might see that (for lack of a better way of putting it) behind that word or maybe
within it was something of the substance of the person who spoke it.I think that was true of Madeleine’s
word.Let’s just say that that word
clearly expressed what was in Madeleine’s very heart.There is a good bit of evidence from the
whole body of her writing and from her life that that was the case.I used the expression a few minutes ago that
Madeleine’s word lodged in my soul and changed its course.Is that literally true?Of course not.There is no way to talk about the soul and be
literal.And no way to talk about a
literal word lodging anywhere other than in type on a printed page.But not one of you missed the thrust of what
I was saying.A word—a sentence,
actually—changed my life, my behavior, my perception of what was true.That
is what the Word of God does.It is the
perfect expression of this awesome, creative, loving, imaginative, playful,
flirtatious being that is Being Itself.Words express.And the Word of
God God speaks and, lo and behold, things happen.“Let there be light,” and there is
light.“Go down, Moses,” and Moses
goes.(Of course, if humans get into the
act, the chances are that the word may be temporarily drowned out by some
kicking and screaming.)

The Word becomes flesh.The plot thickens.The Word does
not linger suspended in the air, but actually becomes flesh.What a high opinion the Creator has of
creation!Energy is not sufficient for a
universe, apparently.Matter begs to be
created.And of all the material things
to be chosen for the honor, the human body wins the prize, takes the cake,
walks onto the stage to receive the greatest gift of all.The human body bows its little head, and
speaks the word, “Be it unto me according to your Word.”That is why the story of Mary is so crucial
to hearing the Word.She is the
prototype.Not the only one, by miles,
that ever did so, but the one who said “Yes!” at the moment when all heaven
stood silent, awaiting word back from the human.Flesh it was to be.A womb, gestation, a birth canal, and finally
the interminable pain and urge to push, push, push, until born was the Word,
all red and raw and covered in the stuff of creation.Not in his tiny little fingertips, or in his
yet unused digestive tract, nor in his cute baby feet, nor in the stream of warm
pee that soon enough would wet his swaddling clothes, was there a cell—not a
single cell—where God was not.And that
was not because he was God himself but because he was human, or indeed because
he was a creature in the great created universe.No place and no time exists where God is not,
for all things are alive with the Being that infuses every atom and quark and
string.

The story of how the Word became flesh is not only the story
of how God once said, “Let there be Jesus and there was Jesus.”It is your story and mine.It is the story of how words can be more than
the product of the portion of the human brain controlling rational thought and
language.It is the story of how
whatever resides as logos in the
logic-producing and logic-policing places of you can indeed drop down, down,
down into the lower parts of your body.Words, in other words, can become flesh.To put it one way, Christmas is not about something we believe or
understand, but about something we live.Words, and the ideas they convey, are cheap until they take on flesh.And it is exactly that—how we actually live
the life of God—that Jesus dwelt among us to exemplify and teach.

A few of us specialize in making things more difficult than
they need to be.But most of us want
things to be simpler and easier than they in fact are.Give us a short answer, not a long
explanation.Give us a formula, not a
course.Give us a gospel you can write
on the back of a business card, and we shall be satisfied.The somewhat difficult truth is that we never
hear the real words in the back of our minds or in the depth of our being until
we learn to keep silent.Silence, like
the whiteness of a blank page, is the background necessary for words to
appear.And out of that silence a birth can
take place:the birth of a new you.It might come in the form of a story or a
meal or a book or a play or some role that has been waiting for you for ages.You have a song to sing or a speech to give
or someone to set free or a dream to realize.Whatever it is, the word that will come out of your mouth will likely be
a word that forms on the wings of love.For the place where the word becomes flesh is in that manger called your
heart.

It is said that the Grinch who stole Christmas might have
had a heart that was two sizes too small.[1]Whether we are Grinches or not, our hearts
could stand to grow a little.And that
is what the Word does, when it comes down and becomes flesh in our bodies, in
our movements, in our deeds:it expands
our hearts.Sometimes it expands our
hearts by first breaking them.Disappointments, wars, illness, death, violence, injustice—a whole host
of pains and memories live in our hearts until they may have turned to stone.When the Word becomes flesh, it leaves its
exalted space up in theory-land and leaps down, first emptying all the stones
from the heart and creating there some fleshy room for love.And, surprise!Our hearts, like the Grinch’s, grow (at
least) three sizes in that single leap.

Pick up your pen and write; don’t think.Speak your truth; stop measuring it.Fight for your cause; stop second-guessing
yourself.Angels and archangels might
gather to aid you, and you will never know until you just do it.And when your words become flesh and your
life starts speaking from your body and its heart, then might someone hear your
word and say of your life that it is full of grace and truth.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Amazing to me is the
fact that there always seem to be some people who are ready to believe that the
world is about to end, just about to go up in smoke and (bam!) disappear.More amazing still is the fact that many such
people apparently think that that is a good thing.

Was Jesus such a
person?If, as I believe, we can say
with some assurance that Jesus expected the end of the world as we know it to
occur within his lifetime or at least within a few years beyond, we either have
to say that he knew something we don’t know, or he was just plain mistaken.

It isn’t very
attractive for Christians to imagine that Jesus was wrong about anything. In
fact, it sounds to most ears nothing short of sacrilege to suggest that Jesus
was anything other than perfectly accurate about everything.So let’s not rattle ours or others’ cages by
insinuating that he made a mistake.Let’s imagine instead something very different when we hear his
prediction that

the sun will be darkened,and the moon will not give its light,and the stars will be falling from heaven,and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.[And] they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and
glory.

Now, it is true that we could imagine that he was talking about something
ages and ages in the future—at least as far out as our own age.But maybe there is something else going on
here besides the physical world—earth, universe—collapsing.Maybe instead what we have here is something
like our creation story: eternally true but never intended to be technically
factual.

That in fact seems to track with what Jesus said about the Kingdom of
Heaven, or the Reign of God. It is elusive, surprising, hard to pin down, more
a state of heart than a product of rational thought, hidden, silent, beneath
words, and, above all, “at hand,” already present within and among us.

So what is this, then, that we try to grasp in the language of
apocalypse?What would be like the sun
going out and the moon fading into nothingness?What would be like the stars vacating their orbits and crashing into
earth?What would be so stupendous that
it could only be described as the very powers of heaven being shaken?

What would you do if I told you that what causes the world to change in
drastic ways begins as something so imperceptible that it is on the order of
drawing a breath?It is the tiniest
decision to live differently.

Let me explain.

A friend of mine, John, once worked alongside a guy whom John found to be
extremely difficult.He was irritable,
even irascible, critical, unpleasant, and totally self-absorbed.He embodied every attitude that seemed
negative.John, a kind of
hale-fellow-well-met, did his best to humor his workmate.Nothing worked.Finally, John was at the point of totally
giving up on him.Then it occurred to
John that he would quit expecting anything.He would simply think good thoughts, good wishes, and send a little bit
of love toward his adversary.He decided
to love the guy without telling a soul.Time went by.One day a year or
so later, it dawned on John that the fellow was behaving differently.In fact, he was beginning to exhibit some
strange characteristics.He had become
less critical.He had begun to say
positive things more and more.He had in
fact started becoming actually likeable.

I have heard this story countless times from dozens, maybe hundreds of
people.I have demonstrated it in my own
life, prompted to do so by examples and testimonies of people like John.

Who would imagine that John had, in a split second, decided to do something
that actually changed the world?Yet he
had done just this—simply by deciding to live differently.Some will argue that, well, that was only one
person, and not all that impressive.What about all the evil people who are truly beyond being affected by
niceness?What about all the structures
that limit and destroy the creatures of God—racism, sexism, heterosexism, and
all manner of injustice?Deciding to
love some old grump in your workplace is not quite the same as reforming a
world that is hell-bent on war and destruction.No, it is not quite the same.But
there is something that we can count on.All change is relational.Change
in people, and for that matter change that is transpersonal or non-personal,
happens in the context of relationship.So if we want to do battle with the forces that oppress, corrupt, twist,
and damage the world and its creatures, ultimately we have to do it by being in
relationship with others.Not only do we
have to join hands with our like-minded sisters and brothers committed to our
ideals and values, we have to engage the hearts of those who resist the
change.And we cannot do that by
refusing to be in relationship with them.We will never conquer our adversaries by force and turn them into
anything but victims and more hardened adversaries.If we are to change the world, we have to
learn and practice the power of unleashing love.

Tom Shadyac grew up not far from here in Falls Church, Virginia. Tom had a
fantastically successful career as a comedian and filmmaker, producing such
zany films as “Liar, Liar” and “The Nutty Professor,” winning academy awards
and making tons of money.He had already
begun re-examining his life when he had a serious biking accident that severely
injured him and incapacitated him for months.As he began to ask what, if he were going to die, he wanted to tell the
world, he came up with a documentary calledI Am.He interviewed scientists,
religious leaders, environmentalists and philosophers, including Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Lynne McTaggart, and Howard Zinn. The
film asks two central questions:What’s
Wrong With the World? and What Can We Do About it? In the
film, Shadyac answers that question, or rather hears that answer from
others.“I Am” is the answer that G. K. Chesterton once gave when asked,
“What is Wrong With the World?” Shadyac discovered through his own amassing of
money and things what was wrong with the world:our ever-growing addiction to materialism.“I am” what is wrong with the world.And the cure?Human connectedness, universal respect for all creation, the power of
one to effect change.

This is the stuff that moves
stars, that shakes the powers of heaven, that alters the course of the
universe.This is the apocalypse that we
are not only waiting for but are engaged in bringing about.And how does it begin?By someone’s deciding to love rather than to
fulminate in irritation.With a Rosa
Parks who decides to keep her seat rather than yield to the force that is
simply following uncritically a cultural script.With a Mohandas Ghandi who refuses to resort
to violence but whose persistence inspires millions and brings an empire to its
knees.With a Nelson Mandela that holds
on to hope for years refusing to concede all hope for an end to apartheid.With Peace Brigades International who dares
to believe that
ordinary people can take action to stop war and human rights violations, even when
their governments cannot or will not.It
begins, this unearthly change, when one of you who decides when going through a
divorce that it is better to love your way through hostile territory than to
try to kick your adversary into poverty.It starts when another one of you decides that you will defend yourself
or your family from emotional or physical abuse without becoming
counter-abusive yourself.Is any of this
easy?Ask the ones who get thrown in
jail for their witness.Ask those who
have let goods and kindred go, and have risked mortal life and the integrity of
their own bodies in the cause of human dignity.

When
Jesus says, “You don’t know either the day or the hour, so keep awake,” he is
stating the basic requirement for starting the Advent of deep change that
shakes the universe to its very foundations.Keep awake means to be conscious.The Advent the world yearns for is the new creation that depends upon
yours and my being conscious of the way we settle in for the long haul with the
forces of repression, narrowness, and hate.True Advent begins when we take one small step to live from the
heart.From that moment, creation begins
to be made new by the One who, living in you and me, makes all things new.

Religion is a rope that consists of three strands.Those strands are the spiritual, the
institutional, and the moral.The
spiritual strand includes the things like prayers, worship, rites and rituals
that people associate with the divine, called by whatever name.The institutional strand encompasses all the
structures, buildings, systems, hierarchies, rules and regulations, thatmaintain, regulate, and control the
activities of the religion.The third
component of the rope is morality:setting boundaries, mediating relationships among people, and
differentiating between right and wrong behavior.

A perennial problem is that, no matter what the religion,
folks tend to confuse these things.For
example, those invested in the institution frequently equate loyalty to the
institution with moral uprightness, with the result that those who are detached
from institutional religion are seen as flawed, bad, wicked, or even evil.And sometimes those who have a moral passion
for justice, for example, look down on those who withdraw to pray, imagining
that they are less than they ought to be because instead of slogging it out for
rights and liberties for the masses, they are busy going to masses, saying
their prayers, and generally not very much helping to right the wrongs of the
world.Likewise, those who think that
religion is fundamentally personal and is about doing whatever one finds
personally rewarding are quick to miss the very powerful force for social
change that sometimes religious institutions can effect, change that can be
quite difficult to make if one is disconnected from an organized, focused
religious community.

Jesus ran into a good bit of this tendency to confuse one
strand of religion with another. He appeared overturning apple carts all over the
place, calling accepted behavioral standards and institutional practices into
question.That did not go down very well
with the religious establishment of his time any more than it would today. When
he began to suggest that those who were outside the religious community,
labeled immoral by the religious authorities, were actually more responsive to
God than were the religious authorities themselves, he was inviting trouble—and
he got into plenty of it.Today’s gospel
lesson is a vignette from that conflict that very much defined Jesus’ ministry.
“Who gave you the right….?” “By what or whose authority are you doing these
things?” These are questions that come straight out of the heart of the
institutional regulation dimension of religion.There is a good bit of evidence that Jesus was not unsympathetic to
institutional religion in general—after all he was a rabbi teaching in the
temple in this very story.But what
seems to have driven him nuts, so to say, was that the institutional crowd had
gotten morality all backwards.Hence his
little parable about the two sons.One
refused at first to do the will of his father and later changed his mind and
complied.The second agreed to do what
was asked and then reneged on his commitment.“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the
kingdom of God ahead of you.”If you had
to throw an insult into the teeth of the religious establishment, that would be
the line you would use.

Most Christians, whatever their favorite strand of religion,
imagine that they are doing exactly what Jesus would approve.But the question for us today is what is the
new frontier to which Jesus’ power is pulling us?Into what new age is Jesus calling us?Not everyone will answer that question the
same way.For some it will be immersing
themselves in the battle for justice and equality.For others it will be helping people to find
their center through prayer, meditation, bodywork, or mindfulness.For others it will be healing, or educating,
or building, or art, or comedy, or parenting, or organizing.The list is endless and includes things that
have to do with one, two, or all three strands of religion or maybe a dozen or
a hundred things outside any of the elements of what we usually consider to be
religious.

So what, then, is the Center?What pulls us together and holds us in
community?I can think of few other
places where the answer is better articulated or more obvious than the one you
have already heard this morning. “Let the same mind in you,” wrote Paul to the
Philippians, “that was in Christ Jesus.“Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.And being
found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of
death—even death on a cross.”

If there is anything that the Church needs today it is not
to argue which strand of the rope is superior to the other strands, but to see
what the rope itself is for.It is not
God, but it is the thing that gets us into contact with the living God.Ironically, it is not holding on to the rope,
and certainly not to just one or two strands of it, but letting go of our grip
on the rope or any of its parts.Or at
least holding it so lightly that we can follow where it leads rather than have
our hands be blistered by gripping what we hold too tightly.It is, in short, following our Master, our
model, our hero.It is having in us the
mind that was his, that emptied himself and embraced physicality, acquiesced to
death, because the most godlike thing he could do was in fact to be an honest
human being, living life with integrity, even if it meant dying on a
cross.That is why his name is above
every name, and why at the name of Jesus every knee bows and every tongue
confesses him Lord.Well, not every knee
bows nor does every tongue confess.But
the knees and tonguest that do belong to those who know that the center, the
focus, and the whole purpose is in fact to come to the end of our rope—exactly
what we are afraid of—where we will find ourselves totally surprised to be not
tied to the rope, but tied to nothing, free as the God who made us.

Frank Gasque Dunn

About Me

I am a spiritual guide (a “soul friend”), offering coaching, counseling, and support to individuals and organizations. I founded and am Executive Director of Jonathan’s Circle, a non-profit organization enabling men to realize wholeness connecting sex and spirit. Read more at thesoulinyou.com.
I was for twelve years Senior Priest of St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington, DC. Prior to that I led parishes in North Carolina, Connecticut, and Virginia.

Welcome to The Book of Common Moments

On this blog I reflect on common moments. Some of those reflections are sermons and other things I have shaped for oral communication. Some are more precise reflections on incidents in mine and others' lives. Some are poems, short stories, essays. I invite you to join in the dialogue.

All our stories amount to an infinite number of variations on a handful of great themes. Becoming conscious of our stories is perhaps the biggest adaptive challenge for human beings. When we begin to know what stories we are telling and living, we stand a better chance of choosing those stories that are true.

Do not believe it because someone said it, or because it is in a book, or because you read it on the internet, or because that is what you were taught in school, church, temple, or Boy Scouts. Believe it only when you have tested it in your own life and find that you can affirm it in the deepest part of your soul.

Destiny

Your soul knows the geography or your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.